New research has discredited the popular belief that street lighting is attractive to common bats. The study, carried out by scientists from the University of Exeter and Bat Conservation Ireland, found that bat activity was generally lower in street-lit areas than in dark locations with similar habitat. The findings have important implications for conservation, overturning the previous assumption that common bats benefited from street-lights because they could feed on the insects that congregated around them. The research, published in the journal Philosophical Transactions ...

Sunday, March 15, 2015, San Diego: Elderly patients once considered too frail or tool sick for aortic valve replacement surgery are living longer, with better quality of life, following a minimally invasive surgery, compared to patients who did not undergo surgery, according a study published in The Lancet today. Researchers at 21 medical centers followed 358 patients with severe aortic stenosis for five years. The patients, with a mean age of 83, were evenly divided into two study groups - one that underwent minimally invasive transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) ...

New Haven, Conn. -- In the first multicenter trial of its kind, Yale researchers tested a new device that lowers the risk of stroke and cognitive decline in patients undergoing heart-valve replacement. The preliminary findings of the DEFLECT III trial were presented by Alexandra Lansky, M.D., associate professor of medicine (cardiology) at Yale School of Medicine, on March 15 at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego, CA. Stroke is a devastating complication of transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), a minimally invasive ...

In a study that included more than 20,000 adults in China with high blood pressure but without a history of stroke or heart attack, the combined use of the hypertension medication enalapril and folic acid, compared with enalapril alone, significantly reduced the risk of first stroke, according to a study appearing in JAMA. The study is being released to coincide with its presentation at the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session. Stroke is the leading cause of death in China and second leading cause of death in the world. Primary prevention (prevention ...

Boston, Mass., USA - Today at the 93rd General Session and Exhibition of the International Association for Dental Research, researcher Olivier Duverger, National Institutes of Health-National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Bethesda, Md., USA, will present a study titled "Hair Keratins as Structural Organic Components of Mature Enamel: The Link Between Hair Disorders and Susceptibility to Dental Caries." The IADR General Session is being held in conjunction with the 44th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental Research and the 39th Annual Meeting ...

Estoril, Portugal: Researchers in the UK have, for the first time, shown how exhaust pollution from diesel engines is able to affect nerves within the lung. Air pollution is a significant threat to health, they say, and identifying potential mechanisms linking exposure to diesel exhaust and the exacerbation of respiratory diseases may lead to treatments for those affected. Mr. Ryan Robinson, a PhD student at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, UK, will tell the 13th European Respiratory Society Lung Science Conference today (Saturday) about ...

BUILDINGS -- Shielding against energy loss ... Air seeping from buildings is responsible for a large amount of wasted energy each year. To combat the problem, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory collaborated with the Dow Chemical Company to develop a sprayable liquid flashing that is more cost-effective than traditional sealing materials such as peel-and-stick tapes. The new technology can be used in residential and commercial construction, and its ease of use results in increased energy savings and decreased labor and installation costs. Additionally, the liquid ...

COLUMBUS, OHIO and FORT WASHINGTON, PA -- Tobacco-related diseases are the most preventable cause of death worldwide; smoking cessation leads to improvement in cancer treatment outcomes, as well as decreased recurrence. According to the American Cancer Society, in 2015, nearly 171,000 of the estimated 589,430 cancer deaths in the United States--more than 25 percent--will be caused by tobacco smoking. To meet the needs of patients who are smokers at the time of a cancer diagnosis, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) has published the NCCN Clinical ...

A work group of physicians from leading academic medical centers across the country, including NYU Langone Medical Center, has developed new quality measures for the detection and treatment of childhood obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a potentially morbid, life-altering condition that affects hundreds of thousands of children and adolescents nationwide. The measures, commissioned and endorsed by the American Association of Sleep Medicine (AASM), are published on March 15 in a special section of The Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. Several different practice guidelines ...

DARIEN, IL - Today the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) published new quality measures for five common sleep disorders, which represents a landmark achievement in the promotion of high quality, patient-centered care in the medical subspecialty of sleep medicine. The summary paper, "Measurement of Quality to Improve Care in Sleep Medicine," is published in the March issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine along with five workgroup papers presenting outcome and process measures to aid in evaluating the quality of care of restless legs syndrome, insomnia, ...

TORONTO, March 13, 2015 - York University researchers have learned how living beings can keep gene expression in check -- which might partly explain the uncontrolled gene expression found in many cancers. "Using yeast as a model organism, we studied the Tup1 protein, a negative regulator of gene expression," says Biology Professor Emanuel Rosonina, adding, "This protein binds to some genes and blocks their expression, helping to ensure genes that shouldn't be turned on remain inactive." The current study, jointly conducted by York University and Columbia University ...

New York, NY--March 23, 2015--A team of Columbia Engineering researchers has invented a technology--full-duplex radio integrated circuits (ICs)--that can be implemented in nanoscale CMOS to enable simultaneous transmission and reception at the same frequency in a wireless radio. Up to now, this has been thought to be impossible: transmitters and receivers either work at different times or at the same time but at different frequencies. The Columbia team, led by Electrical Engineering Associate Professor Harish Krishnaswamy, is the first to demonstrate an IC that can accomplish ...

Following a successful launch at 10:44 p.m. EDT Thursday, NASA's four Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft are positioned in Earth's orbit to begin the first space mission dedicated to the study of a phenomenon called magnetic reconnection. This process is thought to be the catalyst for some of the most powerful explosions in our solar system. The spacecraft, positioned one on top of the other on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 421 rocket, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. After reaching orbit, each spacecraft deployed from the rocket's upper ...

Tropical Cyclone Nathan has made its cyclonic loop in the Coral Sea near Queensland, Australia's Cape York Peninsula, and is headed away from land. However, satellite imagery reveals that Nathan's movement away from Queensland is a slow crawl. On March 13 at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT), Tropical Cyclone Nathan's maximum sustained winds were near 55 knots (63 mph/102 kph). It was centered near 13.1 south latitude and 145.5 east longitude, about 229 nautical miles (263 miles/424 kph) north of Cairns, Australia. Nathan has slowed down and was moving to the east-northeast at 2 ...

Tiny populations of invasive species such as Asian carp start their domination of new ecosystems by hanging out at local landmarks, according to a new study published in the journal Theoretical Ecology this week. Understanding how species use these local hotspots can play a key role in how officials approach population control for conserving endangered species and controlling invasive ones. "We recently found that only ten Asian carp are needed to establish a population in the Great Lakes," said Kim Cuddington, an ecology professor from the University of Waterloo. "But ...

(Seattle, WA - March 12, 2015) Scientists at Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) have made an unexpected discovery that overturns a longstanding belief in the biological sciences. Research, led by Chris Amemiya, PhD, a member at BRI, and primarily conducted by Joyce Tang, was published online in today's issue of Current Biology. The research demonstrates that chitin, a molecule that was previously thought to be absent in vertebrates and that has been shown to trigger an allergy/immune reaction in mammals, is endogenously produced in fishes and amphibians. ...

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Bavi as it continued on a west-northwesterly track through the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. Bavi has already generated a typhoon watch for Guam, Rota, Tinian and Saipan. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of Bavi on March 13. The image showed the eastern two-thirds of the storm and revealed strong thunderstorms around the center of circulation and a thick band of thunderstorms north of the center. On March 13 at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT), Tropical Storm Bavi ...

ST. LOUIS -- A flu vaccine given just under the surface of the skin that includes four strains of inactivated influenza could be more protective than a similar flu vaccine containing only three strains, Saint Louis University research found. These findings, which appear in Vaccine, confirmed the expected results, said Geoffrey Gorse, M.D., professor of internal medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Saint Louis University and the study's lead author. Findings from this study of flu vaccines delivered by a small needle intradermally parallel earlier results ...

PASADENA, Calif., March 13, 2015 -- Expanding blood pressure screenings to non-primary care settings can help identify more patients with high blood pressure, commonly called hypertension, and could contribute to better hypertension control and management, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published today in The Journal of Clinical Hypertension. Researchers examined the electronic health records of 1,076,000 Kaiser Permanente Southern California patients seen over a two-year period in primary care settings and non-primary care settings, including optometry, orthopedics, ...

Preventable deaths caused by acute kidney injury (AKI) could be nearly eliminated in just 10 years, according to leading medical experts. This often forgotten condition - which affects around 13 million people every year and contributes to 1.7 million deaths annually - is preventable and can be treated for as little as $US150 per patient. A major new Commission from The Lancet and the International Society of Nephrology (ISN) reports on an ISN initiative, launched in 2013, which calls for preventable deaths from AKI to be eliminated by 2025 (0by25). According to Professor ...

New estimates published in The Lancet indicate that at best only half of people worldwide needing kidney dialysis or transplantation to treat kidney failure in 2010 received it. This suggests that at least 2.3 million people may have died prematurely from kidney failure because they could not access this life-saving treatment. The research shows that most of these preventable deaths occurred in China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nigeria, where less than a quarter of eligible patients receive treatment for kidney failure. "The high cost of current dialysis techniques ...

SAN DIEGO -- Healthy young adults who don't consume caffeine regularly experienced greater rise in resting blood pressure after consumption of a commercially available energy drink -- compared to a placebo drink -- thus raising the concern that energy drinks may increase the risk of cardiac events, Mayo Clinic researchers found. Results of the study will be presented Saturday, March 14, at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego. In this study, researchers alternately gave a can of a commercially available energy drink or a placebo ...

SAN DIEGO -- People exposed to prolonged periods of shortened sleep have significant increases in blood pressure during nighttime hours, Mayo Clinic researchers report in a small study of eight participants. Results of the study will be presented Sunday, March 15, at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego. In this study, eight healthy, normal weight participants, ages 19 to 36, participated in a 16-day inpatient protocol, consisting of a four-day acclimation period followed by nine days of either sleep restriction (four hours ...

A study led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators suggests that bariatric surgery can significantly reduce the risk of asthma attacks - also called exacerbations - in obese patients with asthma. Their report, published online in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, is the first to find that significant weight reduction can reduce serious asthma-associated events. "We found that, in obese patients with asthma, the risk of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for asthma exacerbations decreased by half in the two years after bariatric ...

Media and popular culture might portray religion and science as being at odds, but new research from Rice University suggests just the opposite. Findings from the recently completed study "Religious Understandings of Science (RUS)" reveal that despite many misconceptions regarding the intersection of science and religion, nearly 70 percent of evangelical Christians do not view the two as being in conflict with each other. The research was presented by Rice sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund today in Washington, D.C., during the American Association for the Advancement ...